When activating the Stonemason mechanic where you overpay to gain two action cards of the value overpaid, the card SOMETIMES allows potion card purchases. Here's what happened:
Set had Stonemason and Apothecary. My opponent purchased a potion, I did not. When he purchased the Stonemason with 4 treasure and 1 potion, he was able to overpay and get two Apothecaries. Later, I purchased a Stonemason with 4 treasure and 0 potion, and the Apothecary was not listed as an option for me to gain from the Stonemason.
As the card text says nothing about "purchasing" the bonus card, I don't think that whether or not you have a potion in play should matter. I don't know if the official dominion rules allow you to gain a potion-costing card from Stonemason or not; typically those special gaining abilities EXCLUDE potion costs, but I don't know for sure in this particular case. Either way, the treatment of the Stonemason card should be consistent: Either "gain a card costing more than this" always includes potion cards or it always excludes potion cards, regardless of whether or not you have a potion in play.
Quote from: themann64 on 26 July 2017, 07:47:30 PM
When activating the Stonemason mechanic where you overpay to gain two action cards of the value overpaid, the card SOMETIMES allows potion card purchases. Here's what happened:
Set had Stonemason and Apothecary. My opponent purchased a potion, I did not. When he purchased the Stonemason with 4 treasure and 1 potion, he was able to overpay and get two Apothecaries. Later, I purchased a Stonemason with 4 treasure and 0 potion, and the Apothecary was not listed as an option for me to gain from the Stonemason.
As the card text says nothing about "purchasing" the bonus card, I don't think that whether or not you have a potion in play should matter. I don't know if the official dominion rules allow you to gain a potion-costing card from Stonemason or not; typically those special gaining abilities EXCLUDE potion costs, but I don't know for sure in this particular case. Either way, the treatment of the Stonemason card should be consistent: Either "gain a card costing more than this" always includes potion cards or it always excludes potion cards, regardless of whether or not you have a potion in play.
You are just incorrect, sorry. You do need the Potion to be in play in order to purchase cards with a Potion cost with Stonemason. Stonemason gains cards with the EXACT cost that you overpay, meaning 2+Potion for Apothecary. There is no ambiguity to that. It's true that Dominion has a variety of different wordings that affect this case (Forge vs. Upgrade for instance) but in this case the text is very clear.
Overpaying entails paying. You need to be able to pay exactly what you want to overpay. It's exactly as when you buy a card: You need to pay the cost.
In order to gain Apothecary via overpaying, you have to pay the cost of the card, which is $2 + [potion]. The only way to pay [potion] is to have played a Potion. (It doesn't matter if the Potion is still in play, it could have been trashed with a Counterfeit for instance.)